


Between These Breaths

by motherconfessor



Category: Emerald City (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Trans Character, F/M, Missing Scene, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9890432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherconfessor/pseuds/motherconfessor
Summary: Mistress West is the Vessel of Truth and Solace; she knows who Tip is before Tip can ask for what he wants.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set between 1x04 and 1x05. Cross-posted onto tumblr.

Once, it had seemed simple enough. Either you were a boy or you were a girl and for Tip, being a boy felt _right_. Now…

Now Tip worked for Mistress West, Vessel of whatever the rest was. He –– were they still a he? They liked _he_ more than she, yes, let’s go with –– he wasn’t quite sure on all the rest. Mistress West often would interrupt anyone who began her title, waving her hands as she squeezed her eyes shut. It appeared as if the words brought on a headache.

He understood quite well how that felt. When some of the courtesan’s called out for him, they often reached out with poppy-blackened fingertips, calling out, _girl_. “Girl, girl, come here. What’s your name?”

“Tip.”

“Tip,” they’d say, enunciating the word with a _pop_ on the ‘p’ _._ “That’s an odd name, Tip.”

“I don’t think so,” he would answer them, and they’d shrug their shoulders and run off their request for Mistress West to fill. None of the girl’s were malicious in their words. Even the few –– and there were only a few –– men that worked there were kind to him.

Still, _girl_ struck him, like chisel against stone, carving bits of him away. He wasn’t sure how to tell them to stop, didn’t know how to bring it up.

Instead, he just kept his head down and worked for Mistress West, blending in and allowing himself to be chipped away.

And West was… _something_. Tip was unsure to what his feelings were when it came to Mistress West.

He instinctively didn’t like Glinda, there was something about those eyes that felt cold, the way she spoke to her sister that just felt wrong back in that orphanage.

But Mistress West was something else, something more confusing. Sometimes, Tip could see her almost crying as she stared off in the distance, before her eyes looked away and a playful smile lit up her face. There were times she talked casually about old circumstances, and others where it drew her into a rage.

He didn’t know what was real with her, except that when asked, West appeared truthful in anything she said.

The root of her truth, he suspected, came from the way she hated lying. She could almost always spot a lie in her courtesans, and people spoke about how the new girls often tried to pull one over her if West had drunk enough of her tea.

But they only ever tried _once_. Tip respected West in that regard.

“Tea!” West called out and Tip appeared with the tray he had been entrusted to look over, placing it down on the table.

“What’s wrong?” West asked as Tip handed over the tea. They were in her private room, away from the noise of the brothel.

West picked at the tea, removing the infuser and breathed deep at the vapour rising from the cup. Waiting for an answer, she took a mouthful of tea and eased back on the window box seat. Her head lulled as the opium hit and then her eyes opened; the pale blue appearing dark with the dilated pupils.

“Mistress?” Tip questioned.

“Do you not enjoy working for me?” she asked. Tip had only begun working for the last week, and with it came a brief induction by a woman named Miranda. Though Miranda seemed to stare at him, there was nothing to really _not_ to like about the job. Even emptying the chamber pot wasn’t that bad.

“I enjoy working here,” he said, realising the words were true. He knew the main cause of this was the freedom he had, and that people treated him with more respect that Mombi. Than Jack had once he turned into this.

 _Jack_ . His heart hurt at the loss of his friend.

“ _There_ ,” West said, pointing lazily with one finger as she took another sip of tea. The hit this time was smoother, duller than the first and her eyes barely flickered closed. “I can see you’re lying.”

“I’m not,” he protested. “I’m just…” and he trailed off, unable to voice her frustration. “I do love working for you. I just thought that…that you would help me. With your magic. You agreed to that, after all.”

West’s head tilted and a laugh spilled from her lips at the bold words. “It’s far more complicated to do what you want me to,” she admitted. “Not only are there laws in place to prevent me, but even if there weren’t, turning you into a boy isn’t easy. Especially if you want it to be permanent.”

“You…you know?” he asked

“I know,” West said. She leaned forward, bobbing her head as she took Tip’s hand and tugged him –– gently –– to sit beside her. “Come,” she whispered a vocal command, no more threatening than a kitten’s mewl.

Even so, Tip followed the prompt and took the seat beside Mistress West as the woman placed the empty cup down and allowed her head to slip into his lap. Tip froze at the action, confused as to what it meant. He’d often seen West do the same with Miranda, but the action felt more intimate that he had thought it to be.

He didn’t know what to do.

Miranda would often stroke Mistress West’s hair. Taking a breath, Tip attempted just that.

“Mm,” West said, her eyes fluttered shut and a soft smiling coming to her lips. Tip stared at her then, realising not for the first time that the witch appeared both very old and very young all at once.

“So…you know?” he questioned, his hand carefully running over the hair, though it shook out of fright. Or nervousness. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling if were to be honest.

“I am the Vessel of Solace and Truth,” West mocked, her hands gesturing loosely in the air before it felt back onto her dress. “And the truth screams out every time someone says _girl._ ”

Tip paused his hand in West’s hair.

“There’s nothing wrong with who you are,” West said, smiling up at him. “You’re still you, no matter how the outside looks.”

“There’s _everything_ wrong with me,” Tip protested.

“You’re boy. A boy with long hair that wears a skirt down to the floor. I know lots of men that have both, including the Wizard.” With that, she smiled teasingly and a lot of pain seemed to ease from Tip.

But Tip knew also that his case was different from what West seemed to think, “It’s not like that.”

“What _is it_ like, then?”

Tip paused, thinking about lying, before realising how pointless that would be. “I used to be a boy, I _was_ a boy,” he explained, “and then I escape from that place and find out that it was all a lie, that someone had _made me_ look like that. But it wasn’t real and even though I keep trying to tell myself that, _this_ body doesn’t feel real –– and that one did.” His heart ached, it hadn’t stop aching since the morning he woke up like this.

“Is that how you came to the orphanage?”

“Sort of,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t matter. Everything just _is_ , now. And…I miss how things were. I miss the most ridiculous things about it, like, that I used to sit by the open window with my shirt open. Now if I tried to do that, people would think I was soliciting something.”

West laughed. “ _That_ I understand.” She lifted her hand up then, taking Tip’s. Her hand was warm to the touch, giving a sort of tingling sensation that ran up Tip’s arm. “Only you can know who you are. No one else can tell you, no matter what they say.”

“But I want to turn back to being a boy. Can you do that?”

West drew in a deep breath and for a moment Tip believed that he’d angered her. But as she eased herself up, there was a smile on her face.

Placing her hand underneath Tip’s chin, West turned his face until they were eye-to-eye. The touch was gentle, curling and Tip wasn’t sure of what he felt then. Except that he was very close to West and her eyes were very blue.

But West’s her head lulled as the poppies warmed her blood. Leaning forward, she shut her eyes and pressed her forehead to Tip’s. She didn’t say a word, but Tip suddenly felt as if everything he felt was open to her.

Every breath, every heart beat suddenly felt very intimate as West held him there. And then, she pulled away. Her hand patting at his.

“Another day,” she said, as if answering an entirely different question.

“Another day?” he asked, but she’d risen, leaving her cup behind and had made her way over to her bed.

It’d been a long day, Tip realised. It was best if he didn’t push his luck.

Still, as he picked up the preparations for the tea, there was a dull feeling inside of him that felt warmer than before.

Perhaps Mistress West had done something.


End file.
